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Loving USA Culture
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
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we're sick of the US being the dominant , assumend cultural force and want something else.
I hate to break it to you, but you chose it, you bought it, and you keep choosing it.
The "we" that you speak of is clearly not as sick of it as you think.
…then treasure yours and stop importing American culture?
IMO the big thing that America offers culturally is choices that don’t fit in the box of existing cultural norms. There’s no “American Breakfast” or “American Music” in the same way you can visually identify Finnish cinema or spot the commonalities in French cuisine.
And when I travel around Europe I see the influx of other cultures primarily via immigration (Berlin has döner, Britain has curries, Spain/Portugal has Moorish and African influence embedded) but at the same time I also see imported ‘American X’ without that immigration. Europeans have identified things they like that other cultures migrate with, but seemingly actively seeks out the things Americans make.
How popular are hamburgers or Taylor Swift in your area, compared to other Euro offerings like Gorjira or handball? France has a strong arts scene supported by the government, but the Palme d’Or rarely goes to their domestic films.
"It's the free market" is honestly just such an American argument it's spectacular. Chapeau to you and the others riding that particular horse. You illustrate the point perfectly.
Not really understanding where you saw a pro free market argument from what I said - my main point was that people like diverse options, and seek out variety, from within and without.
"stop importing American culture" - you blame the consumer here no?
"diverse" so long as you like the ubiquitous: hamburgers, Taylor swift, marvel movies. Increasing American cultural dominance is the opposite of diversity.
At some point to become a consumer your money and/or attention is voluntarily given to A Thing. That’s a choice. But with internet cookbooks, bandcamp, IMDb, CrunchyRoll, etc etc you have the ability to seek out precisely what interests you, with the only burden being discovery. Monoculture died with the internet, you being on Lenny is a testament to that.
Exactly, you think it's all personal responsibility. That the economics of culture have no impact (or are desirable?). Totally ignoring that access to culture is not deliberate. There are massive network effects and constant, unavoidable advertising. Your very tastes are shaped by society around you.
And lol at lemmy as an example. Social media and content aggregation is even more homogeneous than film/print/music/food. The fact that tiny countercultures exist doesn't disprove that.
My sides.
Right, pretty funny that this is parroted so thoughtlesly. I mean i see where it comes from but also... so obviously false.
Then whats your other argument, cause the Japanese kinda did the same thing with anime. Its what can best be described as market controlled cultural forces, nobody else was offering ultra violent animation so folks imported anime which filled a market niche. Same could be said of American cultural exports, we create a tonne of shit for ourselves and for some reason folks import it, the Brits kinda did the same thing with music back in the day.
You don't have to insult us though. Just celebrate your own culture.
Honest question- Do nations other than the US work on ratings and box office sales also? For example, if more people watched independent French films or Japanese anime in your nation, wouldn’t they become the dominant influences?
Europe is all old culture, no new culture. America is all new culture, no old culture. Yes, I know that's not 100% true, but how many European countries have their version of Hollywood, Disney or silicon valley? Iirc india, China and Japan all have their equivalents, where's yours?. You just don't spend anywhere near the same amount of money on movies, music and TV. On the opposite side, European art tends to be a lot more mature, however you have to spend money promoting it if you want to compete with the US.
Tbf America is nearly equivalent in size to the full West Europe and the culture difference between east and west coast of America is much smaller than the difference in culture between different European countries. With each country focusing on their own culture there, none of them will ever grow to the size of Hollywood. And with the smaller size, they have less content and less opportunities to captivate people from other places as well. It's a full circle.
lol, America is nearly equal in size to ALL of Europe. they are within 5% of each other.
Japan is probably the next biggest cultural exporter after the US and isn't that much bigger than Germany or Norway.
Lol, no.
Most have them, but Europe speaks dozens of languages, so they are all comparatively small compared to the big English-speaking ones.
We mostly are still building on rehashes of old European folk tales, just like Disney. That said, for example Dutch "Disneyland" exists, you just never heard of it because you did not grow up with Max & Moritz, but Dutch kids did.
Well, that place is mostly about venture capitalists who originally got rich off neocolonialism doing dumping schemes on various industries. Their biggest, most impactful cultural achievement is internet ads.
We do, but we watch our own TV because you don't watch French or Polish shows or games. Except when you do, and it gets translated, like with the Witcher. Also, with music, have you heard of Eurovision? Biggest song contest of the world, with even Australia participating? The one where Celine Dion, Julio Iglesias or ABBA got their start? You probably listen to a ton of songs that debuted there, you just don't know it.
All I'm saying is that just because European low art is not big in the US - even though it is, like Harry Potter, Lego, basically all Western (as in Wild West) movies (they were Italian) - it does not mean it is not bigger in Europe than US art.
Edit: Why the downvotes though? I am not saying "US culture bad", just that "European culture exists". Could anyone elaborate on what's so bad about what I'm saying?
I'm not taking issue with anything else, but I just have to say something about the last bit of what you said.
Westerns. No. Not all of them. Or even most of them are from Italy. That's a special and significant subgenre called Spaghetti Westerns. Or Italian westerns, mostly because of Sergio Leone, these happened in the 60s and 70s. But if you look at the history of westerns and western movies, they were made in the US starting all the way back in the 1910s with silent films and continued on into the golden age of the 40s and 50s.
I stand corrected, not a big fan of them so I didn't think about it too hard.